As Am I
by Allychik6
Summary: Have you ever wondered why some children are mean and some overwhelmingly nice? Why some are great students, behave well, or are juvenile delinquents?


**As Am I**

Have you ever wondered why some children are mean and some overwhelmingly nice? Why some are great students, behave well, or are juvenile delinquents? Does it have to do with breeding? Parenting? Or just personality? What is it that makes a person behave in a certain manner?

People often speculate about me. Many blame my father. He's a bastard so I must be one as well. Breeding always will tell true. Some claim it was abuse or lack of a motherly influence in my childhood. They think that Narcissa didn't have much to do with me when I was very young, that maybe house elves raised me. And then some believe that my soul is black and there is nothing anyone can do to change me. In any of these cases, I am a doomed man, doomed to do evil because of my parents and how I was made to live.

But all of that is just not true. I am mean because I choose to be. That's it. There is no complications in my life, no outstanding excuse for my actions. I chose to do what I do. I am to blame.

There was a time in my life when I cared what others thought of me, a time when I could speak politely and actually sound like a human being. But, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. My "goodness" as you might call it, ended shortly after it started.

His name was Kevin, and he was the most popular kid in my nursery school class, well, the most popular boy. Boys and girls did not play together. They had cooties. But that's not relevant to this story. I wanted to be friends with Kevin, and so I plucked up my courage to talk to him.

"Hi, my name is Draco. Do you want to play?" I had spent hours thinking up this magnificent introduction.

Kevin looked at me for a long moment, and then said in a very bored voice. "No. You're boring."

And that was it. The entire class heard, and everyone thought I was boring from then on. I was absolutely devastated as you can well imagine. But that was just the first, in a long track record of no friends.

In the second year of primary school, I tried to make friends with a new student. He didn't know that I had been termed boring and therefore unsuitable to play with. We lasted a total of one recess before another kid started whispering in Jacob's ear. After that he stopped playing and talking with me. Only once did I catch him looking at me with pity. That's when I got a new nickname, bully, but Jacob never looked at me like that again.

Contempt is so much easier to deal with then pity or scorn.

When I was eleven, there was Harry, who at least had the decency not to pretend to be my friend. He dismissed me outright, which stung, but in the end it was a good thing. Harry was destined to become my ultimate rival, although not my arch enemy. My arch enemy was his best friend Ron. There is a difference between the two. One can have a rival and not hate him.

I learned eventually, the people I pick to be friends with will betray me, and therefore it's just easier to be friendless. The entire reason that I am a jerk, a bastard, mean, rude, and an all around horrible person, is because I am afraid of other people. If they don't mean anything to me, then when they leave, they can't hurt me. I am so afraid that you will hate that I hate you first.

Sad, isn't it?

Everyone is always wrong when it comes to me, the things I do, the reasons I do them. Fear is what drives me, not hate, not abuse, not some perverse desire to please my father. Fear. When you really think about it, people are terrifying.

Except one.

It's really ironic that she would be the one person who didn't scare the shit out of me. She should have been the last person I would ever even consider confiding anything into. But there is something in her eyes that just screams trust me.

Weasley's sister.

Potter's Girlfriend.

The sister of my arch enemy, and girlfriend of my rival.

Can I make it any more clear how utterly unheard of this was? Ginny Weasley was the only person I felt I could trust with my appreciation. Okay, so she did fight a lot with her brother, and she wasn't really Potter's girlfriend anymore. But everyone thought of her that way.

Maybe that's why I felt I could trust her.

I'm not sure exactly when it started, but Ginny collected secrets. She liked to hoard them close by and never would tell anyone what she knew. In her first year at Hogwarts she spied her brother Percy and some girl, maybe that's when the obsession started.

There is something appealing about secrets, in getting them, keeping them. There's a deliciousness in knowing something other do not, a superiority. But I'm more interested in what they can do for me rather then just keeping them. That's what made Ginny such an anomoly; she resisted the temptation of blackmail. And I'm sure she could have made a fortune. I would have paid millions to keep my secret under wraps.

But I think she might have actually been incapable of sharing that stuff locked away in her mind. For her it was all about the feeling of knowing she was better then everyone else. There was no need to lord that fact over everyone. Not that it really matters.

"You have something you want to tell me?" We were both seated at the bar nursing dry martinis. "You wouldn't be the first."

"I'm sure."

We sat there for a little while, not looking or talking, just sitting companionably. Hard to imagine that I can sit comfortable with anyone, especially her. It wasn't the silence that got to me, but my own need to share the Secret.

"I'm afraid." No, I wasn't drunk so don't go assuming I was.

She didn't say anything, didn't look over, didn't acknowledge my words. But I knew she heard.

"I'm tired." This was the hard part, actually naming my fear and saying it outloud. "I'm so tired of this fear, but I don't know how to live any other way."

"Are you courageous if you face your fear or if you hide it from the world? In either case you must confront it every day." She stared into her glass, searching for the answer in the liquor. I don't know why she said that or looked forlorn. I can only guess she had secrets which no one could guess at, secrets that couldn't be shared with the world. Maybe that's why she collected them. If she could concentrate on others she could avoid herself.

Ginny had flaming hair, not a pretty color. Her face was a little squashed, nothing grotesque, but not overly appealing either. She was neither tall nor short, skinny nor voluptuous. She would never be considered a beauty; the most she could hope for would be cute, maybe pretty. But I was attracted to her in this moment of weakness.

She stared at the martini her eyes not focusing on anything, or maybe they were focused on something only she could see. It was painful to look at her, not because of her looks, but because of the expression on her face. She was on the outside all that I was on the inside. Empty, soulless, alone with only her secrets to comfort her.

And those are no comfort at all.

"Everyone has them. Little, big, inane, disastrous, they come in all shapes and sizes. One day, they'll all burst out of me in an explosion so grand everyone will be incinerated. And yet, people still assume that I'm safe. They assume that I will not tell a soul their greatest fears, their most prized secrets. They assume I am a SecretKeeper."

"I'm afraid of people." I admitted softly.

"As am I." She smiled.

Don't ask me why I did it. Don't ask what I did with hers. And don't ask what happened afterwards. Because the answer you should already know. And if you don't, just look into her eyes. It's only there that you can see the little smile, the tiniest glimmer of peace.

Ginny Weasley is a tortured soul. I don't know what her secrets are, but I know that she finds solace in what happened afterward, in why I told her, and in the fact that I will in never tell hers.

I will never tell.


End file.
